Month: June 2006

Pets

A Most Contagious Game

Shelly

I did a little more tweaking to the blog template, in order to add a links menu and banner image to the header. This involved more hair pulling, while I tried to add a button menu widget to my template. The guy who created the Tiga theme has updated it, and it now has that capability, but making it work is beyond my skill level. I ended up dumping the links into a table, then dumping that into my header.php template.

In other news, my old cat, Pandora, continues to take her job as Entertainment Coordinator seriously. This morning, as I was brushing my teeth, I heard a racket in the bath tub. I opened the shower curtain, and there was Pan, maniacally chasing her tail. She was having a spectacularly good time, which made me laugh. I nearly choked on my toothpaste. Harriet overheard (the laughing, not the near choking), and came into the bathroom to see what the commotion was about. She promptly picked up the silly vibe, and started kidney beaning, play bowing, woo-wooing, and basically behaving like the deranged-but-goofy Boxer clown that she is. It’s hard to resist such a delightful invitation to play, so I got a little sidetracked.

I sometimes wonder what people without pets do for entertainment.

Art, Paintings

In Progress, Part Deux

Shelly

It’s been a a month, exactly, since I started this one. The base coat was oil, so I wanted to give it plenty of time to dry before working on it some more. I also was feeling lazy, to be truthful. I’ve had two more goes at it, with oil pastels and oil pencils. I like the visual and tactile texture that’s beginning to develop, but it has a way to go yet.

100_2241
oil, oil pastel, and oil pencil on newspaper adhered to 90lb Stonehenge paper
11 1/4 x 15 inches
29 June 2006

I’m not sure what this little bowl will eventually hold. I’ve got some gorgeous luna moth wings (thanks, Pyewacket!) that I might combine with leaves. The problem is, figuring out how to adhere the wings without damaging them. I’m also considering something viney, perhaps hair and/or braided paper.

Art, Crankypantsing

Art History

Shelly

I love art history. I find it endlessly fascinating, because it encompasses just about every aspect of human existence. I realize that not everyone–not even, necessarily, other artists–are as enamored of art history as I am. So, it was gratifying to hear a friend mention that she’d been watching the BBC’s How Art Made the World on PBS. We had a brief discussion about human vs. animal perception, idealization (e.g. the Venus of Willendorf vs. the Kritios Boy), and the flow of artistic conventions from the Egyptians to the Greeks (Greek Kouros and Korai vs. Egyptian sculpture).

It was incredibly cool to watch her get it, and to see the sparks fly and the synapses connect. Folks, that is why art history is such an amazing thing to study. A good teacher can forever make a positive influence on the way his or her students view and interact with their world.

There are also bad teachers, who make their students want to hide under their desks and cry. Class, meet Professor StuffyPants. I managed to make it through two semesters of survey and one of Medieval before giving up on him. At the end of it, I felt like I deserved some sort of medal for perseverance. With profs like him, it’s no wonder that my fellow art students weren’t very interested in taking more than the bare minimum of art history classes.

He did a disservice to a huge number of students by disrespecting their intelligence and generally acting like a jackass. He had the opportunity to inspire hundreds of kids–art students, no less, who ought to have been an easy sell–but he wasted it. His students would have been better off with him telling them to go home and watch PBS, instead of attending his lectures.

Photography

Sweet Serendipity

Shelly

Earlier today, I posted a link to a website on lightning photography. Well, this evening, I managed to snag my second ever lightning photo. Wheee!

100_2223

For about thirty minutes, thunder had been rumbling. Then, I suddenly noticed that the sky to the southwest was a little pink, from the sunset. At the same time, a large, dark cloud mass had crept in from the north, creating a dark band of land, a light band of pale pink, then a dark band of clouds. I thought the contrast was lovely, so I grabbed my camera. The lightning strike was pure serendipity.

100_2229

100_2230

A few moments later, I noticed that a fringe of rain was falling from the southwesternmost cloud rim. It was dry where I stood, and clear on the far side of the rain sheet. (Both images were taken at about the same time, but with different exposure lengths.)

100_2239

The backside of the storm spewed gumball-sized hail. I went out to check on my car and gathered up some specimens.

This therapy-through-photography thing is pretty damned cool. I’m scared to death of storms, but instead of getting sick, worrying about tornadoes, I actually found myself getting excited about the fact that there was lightning and hail. Not a lot excited, mind you, but any bit helps.

Meta, Pets

Random cares and truant joys

Shelly
  • Via Boing Boing, there is a guy who recreates artworks by painting them in the dust on car windscreens.
  • I had my hands in bleach water for a long time on Monday, and now they’re peeling. Ugh.
  • I suddenly had to cut my hair this morning. Why on earth does that sort of urge always seem to strike at 4am?
  • Slathering your hands with lotion, then picking up a sweaty beverage, is not a good idea.
  • Also, averaging 4 hours of sleep per night is not a good idea. I feel a little bit like this.
  • Speaking of which, is Bea not the absolutely sweetest looking thing you have ever seen? I may need an insulin shot.
  • But, wait! There’s more! And more! And more! (Simone is just unbearably cute.)
  • Now, as an antidote to anyone who might be seduced by the siren song of The Terribly Cute Boxers: Meet Lilly. Lilly reminds me just a tiny, wee, itty, little bit of Harriet.
  • Speaking of Miss Brown… She just keeps getting more and more entertaining with every day that passes. She lives for car rides, so our new routine is for her to accompany me to the mailbox. We’re using it as an opportunity to work on automatic sits, waits, and whatnot. She knows this stuff already, but keeping that knowledge fine-tuned is a good idea. This entails making sure that her butt is always on the ground while I’m putting on her leash, that she always uses the same car door (rear, passenger-side), and that she doesn’t leave the gate or car without permission. She’s a funny, funny dog, so this refresher course has been a total riot for both of us.
  • It’s currently 78F and sunny, which in Indiana means we should be having tornadoes and floods by this evening.
  • Also via Boing Boing, an amazing website of lightning photography, including tips on how do your own lightning photography.

And, now, fun with Stats (a semi-regular feature):

  • nude blog? I expect the searcher was sorely disappointed at the lack of hot porn action hereabouts.
  • victorian punishment for wayward girls? Really? I don’t want to know what, exactly, they were searching for. Let’s just hope that it was scholarly research.
  • half cat half women drawings? I’m reminded of a furry freak who used to plague the dog newsgroups. He was also an amateur artist, and had a bunch of perfectly awful drawings of mating werebeasties on his website. O ick.
  • george munro moravia sutherland earl kenneth 4th halidon? Say that 10 times fast.
  • nathan dicks 1727? I’m guessing this–like the former query–must come from the Esther genealogy.
  • why would a kitten not use the litter box every time? I swear, I get searches like this all the time. Folks, take your cat to the vet! If it’s not using the litter box, it could be a serious–and very painful–medical problem. It’s far better to rule that out, then look to potential behavioral issues, than the other way around.
  • 87 files in 7 albums and 9 categories with 0 comments viewed 0 times? M’kaythen! My guess is that this was a cut-n-paste mistake. But, if so, how it got someone to my website is a mystery.
  • nick cave his son jethro? Now, I can understand Googling for Nick and Jethro. I’ve done it myself. However, the wording of the query is a little amusing.
  • jethro nick? That’s a little more to the point, but it’s gone a bit far in the other direction.
  • jethro lazenby? Now, that’s more like it.
  • psittacism? This one makes me inordinately happy.
  • civil war male wasp waist image? Sorry to disappoint, as I have no images of such.
  • the state hospital by ed kienholz? I get a lot of Kienholz queries.
  • precolumbian artifacts for sale stone heads? I also get a lot of hits returned for searches on Precolumbian art. Ironically, the essay in question is partially about why trafficking in antiquities is a Very Bad Thing. So, no, I don’t have any stone heads for sale.
  • maya penis? No, really.
  • funeral remember with with laughter as that is how i will remember you? Another fan of the original CuddlyGoth? Or, a Little House fan? Or, something else altogether?
Art, Drawings, Meta

This private thing

Shelly

My Flickr Pro account expired last month, and I neglected to renew it. Then, I got a bad case of the grumpies about it, so I stopped using it altogether. I suddenly decided this afternoon that that just would not do, so I renewed it and added a badge thingumy to my right sidebar. Ain’t it purty? I also created a smaller version of my gallery graphic and added that, too, cuz why the heck not?

Nude II
Nude, ink on paper, 24 x 18 inches

Then, since I was on a roll, and because I was suffering from an attack of OCD, I created a header graphic [1] and updated the style sheet for the main part of my website. Yeesh, was that ever a pain in the arse! I did finally manage to get something sorted out that is within the same general visual family as the blog and the gallery. I’ve checked everything in IE, Firefox, and Opera, and though there are various browser-specific quirks, everything seems to be basically functional. I don’t have Netscape (and their stupid download protocol makes it pretty much impossible for me to install it on my machine), so I can’t check that, but I’m hoping that nothing is too out of whack in that direction.

And, with that, I think I’ve enjoyed just about as much Fun with Coding as I can stand. And, I’m sure y’all are sick and tired of hearing about it, so that’s a win-win, eh?

_________________
1. I thought long and hard about the image I picked. I nearly went with another filmstrip collage, but I just couldn’t get excited about that. The sketch I used was done in figure drawing class–a 10 or 15 minute drawing that was never finished. I hung onto it, though, because despite the fact that it’s rough, I really like it. I also like the symbolism of the nude, faceless figure. Blogging and presenting your art on-line is sort of like that. You tend to share more of yourself than is probably prudent, but no matter how transparent you are, you’re still, to some degree, an unknown quantity.

Crankypantsing

Only dreaming

Shelly

I stayed up way past my bed time last night, watching a truly awful interpretation of The Swiss Family Robinson. Why do I do these things to myself? I loved the MacGyver aspect of the book, so, since I’ve been on a bit of a pioneering bender, I’d added the series to my Netflix queue. (Yes, these are the aforementioned discs that were shipped to me out-of-order.) I assume the series was created for cable teevee, but I don’t know which company to hold responsible. Really, it’s that bad. I can’t even recommend it for the cheese factor. That’s two hours of my life I won’t be able to get back.

Because I was up so late, I slept in this morning. That’s rarely a good idea, because when I do, I inevitably have bad–or at least weird and disturbing–dreams. Usually they involve things like being chased around abandoned amusement parks by Sleestak and/or Stormtroopers. This morning’s weird and disturbing dream was caused by yesterday’s bout of template ugliness. I dreamt that the CIA were forcing me to control people’s behavior with style sheets. Not being any sort of coding genius, I had to figure out, by trial and error, how changing tiny variables would affect people. I don’t remember any more of the dream than that, but I woke up feeling just a little panicked.

I think it’s time for me to toddle off in search of caffeine.

Meta

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Shelly

My apologies for the uglies, but it was suddenly time for a template change. Since I’m sick of the old template, and I can’t find one that has enough of the features I want, and I don’t feel like doing a major overhaul, I’m leaving the classic default template up for the time being. I’m likely to do some tweaking on it, unless I can find something else that will work and that strikes my fancy.

Why, oh why, can’t someone out there in template-making land cater to both my obsessive compulsive and my aesthetic needs?